Scales that new listeners seem to gravitate to?

I used to hate 5-equal, or see no utility for it, because I was only
used to thinking of it as some kind of extreme bounding point for
meantone. And at that point, it was kind of weird to have 5/4 and 4/3
mapping to the same interval, so I resigned the whole concept to the
level of "interesting modal-sounding pentatonic scale" and left it at
that.

Then I discovered blackwood, in which you simply put a 5 in there, and
my whole concept of things changed. Suddenly you have 5-limit harmony
in this entirely new framework, and it was beautiful. Who cares if 4
fifths match up with a third? All of the puns in that scale, rather
than sounding like strange "features" that I have to spend time
getting used to, sounded amazing to me right off the bat. And they
still do. This comes in stark contrast to porcupine[7], which even
after a year of listening now, still sounds sometimes to me like a
warped diatonic scale.

I have since started using it as a scale to show my friends as an
intro to microtonal scales. Here's the formula: load Scala up, put
blackwood on the chromatic clavier, make it so that when you right
click major 9 chords and minor 9 chords play depending where on the
scale you click. Be sure to use a timbre like the GM Ocarina or
recorder or something that can handle the sharp fifths. I highly
recommend beatboxing at this point, but that's optional. Then right
click away, using all of the diatonic conventions that you're familiar
with, but finding now that the system is reflected on itself, which
you can take advantage of for interesting puns. Blackwood is like a
symmetric diatonic scale, I think.

Anyway, the interesting thing, and the point of this message, is that
invariably the reaction is way better than when I load up 72 and mash
around with stuff like 2:3:5:7:11. It also seems to work better than
if I load up porcupine[8]. In fact, it's worked better than pajara
too. In fact, it's worked better than anything else I've found so far.
Everyone else's reaction seems to be very similar to mine, which is
that the limma puns seem to immediately sound fresh and novel instead
of irritating and something you have to get used to.

Perhaps what it is is that when we talk about people fitting things to
a diatonic template, that implies more things than just "5 large
notes, 2 small notes." For one thing, like with the diatonic scale,
Blackwood has major and minor chords sharing interval classes, which I
think is a defining characteristic of the diatonic sound. We also have
"rooted" 5-limit triads on almost every note of the diatonic scale,
insofar as 10:12:15 is rooted in an abstract sense, and Blackwood
makes this -every- note of the scale.

Porcupine[8], on the other hand, has more in common with something
like the octatonic scale, where you have major chords turning into
inverted minor chords and vice versa (or, in a simpler sense, 3/2
turning into 4/3). The same with something like kleismic. So perhaps
when we talk about fitting things to a diatonic template, we're
subconsciously really looking for features like the above in addition
to the 5L2s pattern.

Anyway, does anyone else have any experience with something like this?
Are there any other scales that people find that listeners tend to
immediately gravitate to, especially ones that support triadic or
tetradic harmony?

-Mike

The three scales I've used that seem to get an overwhelmingly positive response from most listeners are Blackwood (people don't seem to care whether it's 15, 20, or 25), the 14-EDO 5L+4s scale (I think of it as a 2.3.7 subgroup that tempers out 49/48) which seems to be almost as likable in 19-EDO as Godzilla, and (believe it or not) 16-EDO's 2L+5s scale (which I treat as a sort of 7-limit or even 11-limit version of Mavila). Blackwood you've covered, so let me sell you a bit on the other two.

The 14 & 19 scale is really friggin' cool. It's like your "Island" scale but it's geared for 6:7:9 triads, which 14-EDO manages with very low badness. 7 of the 9 triads have a 3/2, and (here's the fun part) most of the triads have BOTH a 7/6 and a 9/7. This makes for some INSANE chord progressions, and you can also do the minor-key authentic V-i cadence without chromatically altering any notes (like in Pajara). I really love doing symmetric-ish chord progressions where you flip the majors and minors in the 2nd half. It's kind of like having Meantone and Mavila happening at the same time but with some slightly-exotic septimal harmonies. In the 14-EDO version, you get a couple of neutral triads, too, but in 19-EDO (at the cost of more damage to the the 7/6) you get better 3/2's, and one 5-limit major triad and one 5-limit minor triad instead, with the major conveniently located on the tonic position and the minor right where you'd expect it a major 6th higher.

Now, 16-EDO...you might not buy this one so easily. But the first track on "Map of an Internal Landscape" is in this tuning, using the 2L+5s scale, and it seems to freak people out in a good way. It's the one track of mine that Michael S. (djtrancendance) always mentions as a standout. It's true, if you try to play the triads as straight 4:5:6's, it hurts. That 675-cent fifth is painful without some serious timbral blurring. But it's a bit LESS painful at 1875 cents, and if you voice a major chord as 4:5:10:12 instead it is actually okay. You tend to hear the 10:12 or the 5:12 louder than the 4:12. Or--and here's a novel concept--play rock music with it and just leave out the fifths entirely. Or, even better, use the 9-note MOS of 7L2s, where you get 975 cents and 900 cents sharing the interval class of an VIII, and rock out with some parallel VIII's! Actually, you can pull off similar things with VII's in the 7-note MOS, only instead of 975 and 900, it's 975 and 1050, aka 7/4 and 11/6. So what I do, and what people seem to like, is do a primarily dyadic progression/riff in a lower register and then do a melodic part in the upper register, where it doesn't even matter if I hit one of the bad 4ths or 5ths because I'm an octave or two above the root and it doesn't hurt. No special timbres needed! People love it, because the harmonies can sound somewhat familiar if I'm using parallel 3rds or 6ths in the accompaniment, but the melodies sound totally bizarre!

People seem to like Pajara in 22 as well as Superpyth in 17, but half the time they don't notice it's not in 12. I tend to try to avoid scales that you can do in 12 because even if the harmonies are better or different, the differences seem to be too subtle for most ears.

-Igs

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> I used to hate 5-equal, or see no utility for it, because I was only
> used to thinking of it as some kind of extreme bounding point for
> meantone. And at that point, it was kind of weird to have 5/4 and 4/3
> mapping to the same interval, so I resigned the whole concept to the
> level of "interesting modal-sounding pentatonic scale" and left it at
> that.
>
> Then I discovered blackwood, in which you simply put a 5 in there, and
> my whole concept of things changed. Suddenly you have 5-limit harmony
> in this entirely new framework, and it was beautiful. Who cares if 4
> fifths match up with a third? All of the puns in that scale, rather
> than sounding like strange "features" that I have to spend time
> getting used to, sounded amazing to me right off the bat. And they
> still do. This comes in stark contrast to porcupine[7], which even
> after a year of listening now, still sounds sometimes to me like a
> warped diatonic scale.
>
> I have since started using it as a scale to show my friends as an
> intro to microtonal scales. Here's the formula: load Scala up, put
> blackwood on the chromatic clavier, make it so that when you right
> click major 9 chords and minor 9 chords play depending where on the
> scale you click. Be sure to use a timbre like the GM Ocarina or
> recorder or something that can handle the sharp fifths. I highly
> recommend beatboxing at this point, but that's optional. Then right
> click away, using all of the diatonic conventions that you're familiar
> with, but finding now that the system is reflected on itself, which
> you can take advantage of for interesting puns. Blackwood is like a
> symmetric diatonic scale, I think.
>
> Anyway, the interesting thing, and the point of this message, is that
> invariably the reaction is way better than when I load up 72 and mash
> around with stuff like 2:3:5:7:11. It also seems to work better than
> if I load up porcupine[8]. In fact, it's worked better than pajara
> too. In fact, it's worked better than anything else I've found so far.
> Everyone else's reaction seems to be very similar to mine, which is
> that the limma puns seem to immediately sound fresh and novel instead
> of irritating and something you have to get used to.
>
> Perhaps what it is is that when we talk about people fitting things to
> a diatonic template, that implies more things than just "5 large
> notes, 2 small notes." For one thing, like with the diatonic scale,
> Blackwood has major and minor chords sharing interval classes, which I
> think is a defining characteristic of the diatonic sound. We also have
> "rooted" 5-limit triads on almost every note of the diatonic scale,
> insofar as 10:12:15 is rooted in an abstract sense, and Blackwood
> makes this -every- note of the scale.
>
> Porcupine[8], on the other hand, has more in common with something
> like the octatonic scale, where you have major chords turning into
> inverted minor chords and vice versa (or, in a simpler sense, 3/2
> turning into 4/3). The same with something like kleismic. So perhaps
> when we talk about fitting things to a diatonic template, we're
> subconsciously really looking for features like the above in addition
> to the 5L2s pattern.
>
> Anyway, does anyone else have any experience with something like this?
> Are there any other scales that people find that listeners tend to
> immediately gravitate to, especially ones that support triadic or
> tetradic harmony?
>
> -Mike
>

Igs>"Now, 16-EDO...you might not buy this one so easily. But the first track
on "Map of an Internal Landscape" is in this tuning, using the 2L+5s scale, and
it seems to freak people out in a good way. It's the one track of mine that
Michael S. (djtrancendance) always mentions as a standout."

Confirmed! It's one of those rare non-meantone microtonal tracks I could
easily show to just about anyone without them just going "uh, yeah, avant garde,
ugh..." Are you saying you've gotten similar positive reactions from other
people as well?

>"The 14 & 19 scale is really friggin' cool. It's like your "Island" scale but
>it's geared for 6:7:9 triads"

Any way to post scala files for these? I'd love to try them all out...

>"People seem to like Pajara in 22 as well as Superpyth in 17, but half the time
>they don't notice it's not in 12. I tend to try to avoid scales that you can
>do in 12 because even if the harmonies are better or different, the differences
>seem to be too subtle for most ears. "

Good point...it rather kills the artistic mystique. Same goes, at least to
me, with most anything that's straight pythagorean or meantone based.

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 10:49 AM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> The 14 & 19 scale is really friggin' cool. It's like your "Island" scale but it's geared for 6:7:9 triads, which 14-EDO manages with very low badness.

Yeah, this is the island one where 91/90 also vanishes. Maybe it had a
name before island came along. 24-equal is also great for this because
it subdivides 12, and people can start playing right away, and also
the fifths are just what they're used to. 19 might be ideal.

> 7 of the 9 triads have a 3/2, and (here's the fun part) most of the triads have BOTH a 7/6 and a 9/7. This makes for some INSANE chord progressions, and you can also do the minor-key authentic V-i cadence without chromatically altering any notes (like in Pajara).

What do you mean by the last part?

> I really love doing symmetric-ish chord progressions where you flip the majors and minors in the 2nd half. It's kind of like having Meantone and Mavila happening at the same time but with some slightly-exotic septimal harmonies.

I just showed this to my sax player friend in NYC, who at one point
was Wyclef Jean's sax player, and called it "island diatonic." I
figured since he's a horn player, the only tuning he can really play
in right now is 24-tet, and since this exists there, then there you
go.

The way I communicated the exotic septimalness of it was that it was
the "tropical flavored" version of the normal diatonic scale. Like,
you know when you want to buy starburst or something, but every once
in a while, instead of the regular kind, you get the tropical flavored
version? This is like the tropical flavored yet still tonal version of
the diatonic scale.

Do you have an example of this progression?

> In the 14-EDO version, you get a couple of neutral triads, too, but in 19-EDO (at the cost of more damage to the the 7/6) you get better 3/2's, and one 5-limit major triad and one 5-limit minor triad instead, with the major conveniently located on the tonic position and the minor right where you'd expect it a major 6th higher.

Do you not like the 24-tet version? It's very different than in 14-tet.

> Now, 16-EDO...you might not buy this one so easily. But the first track on "Map of an Internal Landscape" is in this tuning, using the 2L+5s scale, and it seems to freak people out in a good way. It's the one track of mine that Michael S. (djtrancendance) always mentions as a standout. It's true, if you try to play the triads as straight 4:5:6's, it hurts. That 675-cent fifth is painful without some serious timbral blurring. But it's a bit LESS painful at 1875 cents, and if you voice a major chord as 4:5:10:12 instead it is actually okay.

This also seems to apply to blackwood.

> You tend to hear the 10:12 or the 5:12 louder than the 4:12. Or--and here's a novel concept--play rock music with it and just leave out the fifths entirely. Or, even better, use the 9-note MOS of 7L2s, where you get 975 cents and 900 cents sharing the interval class of an VIII, and rock out with some parallel VIII's! Actually, you can pull off similar things with VII's in the 7-note MOS, only instead of 975 and 900, it's 975 and 1050, aka 7/4 and 11/6.

Hells yes. I have to try this.

> So what I do, and what people seem to like, is do a primarily dyadic progression/riff in a lower register and then do a melodic part in the upper register, where it doesn't even matter if I hit one of the bad 4ths or 5ths because I'm an octave or two above the root and it doesn't hurt. No special timbres needed! People love it, because the harmonies can sound somewhat familiar if I'm using parallel 3rds or 6ths in the accompaniment, but the melodies sound totally bizarre!

Igs dude, you're the man. That's a great idea. I really have to listen
to the album again, because the last time I really went through the
entire thing I was so new to microtonal music I couldn't figure out
what was going on. I bet it sounds like a totally different album now.

> People seem to like Pajara in 22 as well as Superpyth in 17, but half the time they don't notice it's not in 12. I tend to try to avoid scales that you can do in 12 because even if the harmonies are better or different, the differences seem to be too subtle for most ears.

I don't think anyone has ever heard Pajara in 22 and not thought it
sounded like 12. To be honest, and this is cardinal heresy around
here, I actually prefer the version in 12. This is because 81/80
vanishing also happens to mean that instead of that one blown tritone
in the near-MOS SPM scale splitting off into 11/8 and 16/11, it splits
off into 4/3 and 3/2. This means you have an extra fifth, and so one
of the modes of the SPM scale in 12-tet is like the full tonal version
of the "blues" scale: C D Eb E F G A Bb B C. The main bonus to the
22-tet version is that the 4:5:6:7 tetrads are a lot more resonant,
and since you're in 22 you have 11-limit harmony at your disposal if
you decide to go off the scale, but bleh. I have to admit when things
work and when they don't.

-Mike